June 16, 2022 • 41 mins
On a mundane level, a cauldron is nothing more than a great cooking pot, but it takes on supernatural dimensions in various myths and legends. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the history of cauldrons and their links to tales of witchcraft, rebirth and the mandate of heaven.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
it's Cauldron's Part four. This is really the last Cauldron's episode, right, yes,
(00:22):
for now, um, but no, no, this is the last one.
Even my son when he asked what I was doing today,
I said, we're going to record a fourth Cauldron's episode.
He's like, really, I was still you are still doing
those Cauldron episodes? Like, yeah, yeah, this is some more
exciting stuff. And you know, there's so much we're not
even gonna be able to cover in these episodes, but
this is an exciting one because we're gonna roll through
a few more myths. We have some more content about
(00:46):
just how Cauldron's factor into our our history and our beliefs.
Uh and you know we'll get into uh the Inferno
a bit as well. Rob, I am ready to be boiled.
All right, Well, let's the basically we've we've alluded to this.
We've all along we've mentioned that you have some strong
Celtic traditions that involve the Cauldron and they end up
(01:09):
having an influence over European traditions of the cauldron in general.
Uh So let's roll through just a few of these
different myths. I'm not going to go into super detail
on these, though a number of these are the subject
of of epics and longer tales and of course treatments
and retreatments over the years. So let's start with the
(01:30):
Dogda's cauldron. So Dogdo or the Dogdo was the most
powerful of all the too often to dine and you
know these are the magical folk, um, you know, the
ancestors of Ireland and so forth. Uh, Dogto was a
master of the battle club, the magic harp, and the cauldron.
(01:50):
He was sometimes called the good God because he was
simply good at everything. Today you'd call him a Mary Sue.
As Patricia Monagan explains in the Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology
and Folklore, he was kind of a god of not
only fertility, but also kind of exaggerated male desire. So
(02:11):
he's round, you know, kind of a rotund individual. His
tunic is a bit too short to cover his genitals
in some depictions. Anyway, he wields a mallet that's so
huge that he has to drag it behind him in
a cart So he's he's kind of this exaggerated cartoon
character in many respects. I like them already. He also
has a pair of self replenishing pigs that you can
(02:34):
just keep eating. Um, I'm I'm not sure how the
details of that work. I'm assuming it's like you cook
them up or you're I don't know if you're slicing
pieces off of them. I'm not sure. But anyway, I
don't know that the pigs really mind. They're magical after all,
but even more magical than the pigs. He also has
a magic cauldron that can never be emptied. It it
(02:55):
overfloweth with goodness. Uh. So he has many romantic adventure years.
He has many children. He's eventually slain in battle by
the seth Leon, wife of the Great fa Marii and
King Baler, and then he goes on to party forever
in the other world, sustained by his his bottomless cauldron
(03:15):
that he gets to bring with him into the afterlife.
Oh that's lucky. Yeah. Now. Bonnigan, who also wrote The
Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, wrote that that the Irish
cauldron is of course not only a mundane item for
cooking and stewing, but also quote a place where new
life was brewed and stewed. Uh. It was a symbol
(03:39):
of great power for the Celts. The Roman writers. Strabo
describes a great cauldron sent to Caesar by Simbri and
claims that the Celts ritually sliced open the throats of
prisoners over such a cauldron. And these traditions, to whatever
extent they are accurately reported here, may connect to the
Gunstrip cauldron that we talked about in the last episode
(04:02):
that was unearthed in Denmark but burying Celtic symbols, etcetera. Um.
Other cauldron's Monican rights have been found in bogs and
lakes and are suspected to have been offerings to the
other world. Yeah, that'll actually connect to an archaeology paper
I want to talk about in a minute. In general, though,
she she contends that the Irish cauldron means fullness and abundance,
(04:22):
and Doctor's cauldron is just a great example of this,
a never ending supply of good eats. Um. The Welsh
goddess sur Win also uses a cauldron to make a
broth that abuse one with great wisdom. Uh So it's
interesting how you know, we're getting into talking about just
sustaining the self, sustaining the body via the contents of
(04:43):
the cauldron, but then we kind of take that into
another dimension as well, sustaining the mind. Uh and uh.
This will have ramifications on on other storytelling and mythic traditions.
All right, we'll come back to some of these ideas,
but let's let's move on of the next myth here.
This is another one from Celtic traditions, but it takes
(05:04):
the idea of the cauldron as lifebringer and kind of
puts a different spin on it. This is the story
of the pair do deny the cauldron of Rebirth? Now
there there are already some some accounts that indicate that
the Dogda's cauldron, in addition to overflowing with great and
miraculously healing foods, in some cases, could also raise the
(05:24):
dead if they were lowered into the cauldron. And yeah,
that leads us into what is perhaps the most noteworthy
necromantic cauldron. Um. This is the cauldron of Rebirth from
Welsh mythology and literature. Along with the Cauldron of Dogda.
It's a key mythic cauldron. To understand the artifacts place
in European traditions. It's also the primary inspiration for the
(05:46):
black cauldron that shows up in the novels of Lloyd Alexander.
It factors into a few different tales, including um Brandwyn,
daughter of Lear, a legendary tale from medieval Welsh literature,
and the second of four branches of the mob in
Ogeon collection of Tales. So this is a this is
(06:06):
a pretty interesting one, and again I'm just giving you
the broad strokes here. Again, this one has received much
more expansive treatment and works of literature, but it concerns
the mythic conflict between the Welsh and the Irish, and
involves the exploits of Ifnissian, the half brother of Bron
the Blessed, who has been described as an easily offended
(06:28):
troublemaker or even as a psychotic anti hero. Okay, so
this is a guy who does things like mutil aid
horses inside wars, burn people alive. So he's not presented
as a good guy. He's not. It doesn't even seem
like it's one of these cases where you can say, well,
today we wouldn't like him, but we have to put him.
(06:50):
Look at him within the context of the time. Now
it seems like everyone seems to think that he's supposed
to be a crazy dangerous fellow. He's not Snake plis Skin.
He's Darth Vader. Yeah yeah, But like Darth Vader, he
has a redemption arc of sorts, ends up engaging in
a little bit of self sacrifice to bring balance to things.
(07:12):
So it comes to light that the Irish are using
the magical Cauldron of Rebirth to resurrect their dead warriors
so that they can keep on fighting. And so you
know that the Welsh forces are concerned about this. This
is an unfair advantage, right if you're bringing your own
dead back to life onto the battlefield. So what does
Ethnician do. Well, he hides himself among the enemy Irish dead,
(07:34):
and then the Irish hall all those dead bodies back.
They take them to the Cauldron of Rebirth and one
by one they throw them in the cauldron, and then
one by one each warrior emerges once more to fight.
Eventually they come to Ethnician, who again is pretending to
be a dead irishman. They throw him into the cauldron alive,
(07:55):
and this seems to sort of short circuit everything. You know,
the the cauldron is not designed or made, It does
not exist to resurrect the living. It totally just screws
up everything. And and somehow if Nisinin is then able
to destroy the cauldron from within, but in doing so,
not only does he shatter the cauldron, but he dies
(08:18):
in the process. And there's some wonderful illustrations of this.
I want more detail here. Did like, did he know
that was going to happen to him? Or what did
he expect was gonna like? Did it not? Just did
it not cross his mind that like, oh, yeah, I
can't be resurrected because I'm not dead yet. I think
he knew, I mean, otherwise it's not that I mean,
(08:38):
the self sacrifice is diminished if he doesn't know that
that this is probably going to destroy him. Uh So,
I think the general vibe is the he knows that
this will be the end, but it's the only way
to stop the cauldron of rebirth. Okay, he's not just
being like, dude, I'd love to be resurrected from the dead. No, no, no, alright,
(08:58):
I'm gonna run through a few other cauldrons. Of note,
there's the Cauldron of drin which the giant In medieval
Welsh tradition, there are thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain,
in tailing various horns and chariots, knives, rings, and more.
But there's also a cauldron owned by the giant Drin
which which can tell brave men from cowards because it
will not boil meat for a coward, but we'll quickly
(09:22):
boil meat for a brave man. Now I'm not sure
if there was a vegetarian option, but basically it's it's
said to just be massive enough to cook an entire
wedding feast within Uh. It eventually falls into the possession
of King Arthur and some tellings. But yeah, I guess
it's like if if you're not sure if somebody is
is brave or cowardly, you just have them bring forth
(09:43):
their chicken Cutlets throw them into the cauldron here and
see what happens. Here's another one where I wonder about
the mechanics of exactly what that means. So you put
the meat in. Does it mean if you're a coward
the water won't come to a boil, or does it
mean even if it boils, the meat won't get under
I don't know. I'm I'm just imagining it like, Okay,
(10:04):
you put the meat in and maybe the water looks
like it's boiling, but the meat is not cooking. You
just got some some raw chicken cutlets in there, just
bobbing around. Well, it reminds me of those stories of
um people up on mountaintops trying to cook food, like
boiling potatoes in a pot on Mount Everest, where your
potatoes don't get cooked because when you go higher and
(10:26):
higher into the into the atmosphere, the boiling point of
water goes down. So you can be there boiling a
pot on the stove and it is actually boiling, like
it's bubbling and turning into steam, but the boiling point
is so low that the water is actually not hot
enough to cook your food. So you can boil potatoes
at the top of a mountain for a long time,
take them out, and they're basically still raw. Yeah. I
(10:49):
don't have an answer for that, but it does make
me wonder to what extent like to experiences with different
altitudes and uh and and attempts to boil stuff in
the cauldron, how that might affect this because they would
clearly notice you would know that well here it seems
to take longer to to cook our food. Uh why
(11:10):
might that be? I haven't done the math. I don't
know if there are peaks in Britain high enough for
that to happen. I'm not sure. Maybe so perhaps word
of of this had traveled, who knows. Let's see, here's
another cauldron. This one comes from Norse mythology. Heimer is
a giant and the father of two ace or gods,
according to Carol Rose, who was said to live on
(11:31):
the eastern edge of the universe and had a brewing
pot or a cauldron so large that the heavens could
fit inside it. So we we mentally alluded to this
something like this earlier, and one of the other episodes
about the cauldron becomes kind of like a model, a
technological model for the cosmos itself. And here we have
a cauldron so vast that the universe itself fits inside it.
(11:53):
Whereas the cauldron while you're thinking too hard about this
myth or maybe you're not, I mean, maybe that's ultimately
kind of the goal of one of these stories is
to sort of give you a real head spinner about
about the nature of the universe. So that's the cauldron itself,
but there's there are some stories attached to it. So
at one point the gods decide they're gonna have a
great feast, but they need some sort of vessel to
(12:16):
put all the meat that they're going to drink. And
they're the gods, they can drink a lot of meat.
So they send Thor to borrow uh Heimer's brewing cauldron.
So Thor shows up and Heimer says, no, you can't
borrow this. But they start discussing and they agree, well,
well let's settle this. We'll have a fishing contest. And
(12:36):
there are apparently many different versions of what follows next um.
In one version of Heimer uses two bowls too as
bait and then catches two whales, but then Thor, not
to be outdone, catches the mid guard storm itself the
world serpent um. In some versions, the results are inconclusive
or they're disputed, so they move on to a drinking
(12:58):
contest after of the fishing contest, and in some tales,
Door wins and takes the vessel with him, or finally
just steals it, and Heimer chases after him with an
army of giants, and Thor has to smite all of
them with his hammer. Um. But at any rate, thor
it usually ends up with the cauldron. And the cauldron's
power again is that it's just super big. Thank you,
(13:26):
thank so. Maybe this is a good place in the
discussion to talk about interesting paper. I was reading an
archaeology paper. So this was published by uh the Proceedings
of the Prehistoric Society, Cambridge University Press in and it's
called fire Burn and Cauldron, Bubble, Iron Age and Early
Roman Cauldrons of Britain and Ireland by Jody Joy. The
(13:50):
author of this paper, Jodie Joy, is a senior curator
at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University
of Cambridge. And the paper begins with the quote I
really like it's as uh. It's an old Kazakh saying
that a man can live to fifty, but a cauldron
will live to a hundred. I think you compare yourself
to a cauldron now. But anyway, so Joy begins with
(14:13):
some sections examining the archaeological record of cauldrons in Britain
and Ireland from the Iron Age and the Early Roman period,
and the early parts of this paper going to a
sort of catalog of all these different cauldron artifacts and
a discussion of their manufacture and physical characteristics. One of
the main things about the section is that cauldrons of
(14:34):
the time took a lot of skill to produce. But
the part of this paper that really got my attention
was his section on the use and significance of cauldrons
from this period. Now, it's obvious from the prominent role
of cauldron's in myths and legends like the ones we've
just been talking about, uh and as magical items in
(14:55):
early medieval literature from Ireland and Wales, that these objects
were charged with mythical significance, particularly associated with resurrection and sacrifice.
But if you think about it, why would just a
big metal pot have any particular symbolic or mythic significance? Now,
(15:15):
rob we we've already talked about some ideas we've had
on that that maybe uh it has something to do
with the way that cauldron's transform foods when you cook them,
though of course that's straw of smaller pots as well.
You know, cooking transforms, and thus uh it may be
is symbolic of transformation in some way, But there are
other ways that they could acquire magical significance, as well,
(15:38):
and Joy argues that some of the significance might be
related to how these objects were actually used in their
role in the culture of iron Age Britain in Ireland.
So how were they used? Uh, This is a good
question because there are several lines of evidence pointing to
the conclusion that these huge pots were primarily used to
cook food, particular pularly soups and stews containing meat. Now
(16:02):
we we've already sort of been assuming the soup and
stew connection, but technically, you know, just a big metal
pot could have been used for all kinds of things.
So it is good to examine what the actual evidence is.
And we know of examples where large metal vessels were
used for other things that might have been just decorative,
or they might have been used to make burnt offerings
to the gods or something like that. But no. In
(16:24):
the case of these cauldrons from from iron Age and
and early Roman Britain and Ireland, first of all, it
seems they were clearly designed to hold liquid, and we
can tell because almost all of the cauldrons from this
period in this place show signs of having been through repairs,
which in itself is interesting because it indicates a long
(16:47):
social life for each individual cauldron. You know, they're being
used long enough that people have to like go in
and fix them up after they get damaged. Yeah, it
kind of takes us back to that quote. Right, you
may live to be fifty, but you're auldron will live
to be a hundred. Right. Nowadays humans may live to
be a hundred, but like these cauldrons, you'll probably have
to have some holes patched here. And that's true. Uh
(17:09):
and and so why do we think that these cauldrons
were designed to hold liquid? It's because when you look
at the repairs that were done to them, we see
that they're essentially repairs that would function to keep the
cauldron's water tight. And if these were just decorative or
if they were used for say like making a burnt
offering to the gods or something, they wouldn't need to
(17:30):
patch tiny holes and keep the vessel water tight. It's
obvious that they wanted to prevent leaks. Second line of evidence,
they were clearly designed to be suspended over fires. So uh,
this can be seen from the presence of uh, sort
of supplemental materials like chains, handles, and frames that would
(17:51):
all serve to hang or suspend the cauldron over a hearth. Uh.
And also many cauldrons have layers of soot caked onto
the outside surface, knowing that a fire was applied to
them from the outside. Third, you've got organic residues. Few
artifacts from this period, for example, a group known as
the Chiselden cauldrons have been sampled for organic residues on
(18:14):
the inner surfaces, and chemical analyses indicate the presence of
animal fats, which points to soup source stews containing meat. However,
some cauldrons from Northwest Europe also showed traces of honey,
probably indicating their use in serving honey based meads, which
would be an alcoholic beverage. Yeah, which brings us back
(18:36):
to the myth of the giants brewing cauldron. Yeah. Yeah,
So these cauldrons were almost definitely used mostly for cooking food,
usually meat based soups and stews, but sometimes alcoholic beverages
as well. But can we infer anything else about how
they were used? Well, Joy argues yes we can, and
(18:56):
points as specifically to the fact that these were big. Boy,
these cauldrons are huge. Quote. The cauldron from Hochdorff could
hold five hundred leaders. The cauldrons examined here had more
modest capacities, ranging from thirty to eighty leaders. Even taking
into account the fact that they are unlikely to have
been filled to the brim and probably only ever two
(19:19):
thirds full, even the smallest cauldrons still probably contained twenty leaders.
This is a substantial quantity of food and drink. And
I agree. I don't think I could eat twenty leaders
of soup in a single sitting, but that alone. You
can easily imagine this becoming extrapolated into myths of cauldrons
that are just so full of goodness that you cannot
(19:41):
empty it. You cannot possibly eat all of this food.
Now combine the bigness of these boys with the another factor,
which is that cauldrons are relatively scarce in the archaeological
record compared to other types of household items, even those
made of similar materials. And from these facts, Joy infers
that cauldrons were not used for everyday cooking, but instead
(20:05):
they were used for the community based practice of feasting.
And I believe the argument is that this is sort
of what gives cauldrons their special power, what makes them
uh fit for use as a recurring magical item in myths.
And legends and literature. Uh Joy rights as follows. At
(20:25):
their heart, feasts involved the creation and maintenance of social
relationships and can be used to redistribute wealth, mobilized labor,
create alliances between or exclude different groups, celebrate marriages, commemorate deaths,
and compensate for transgressions. As objects used during feasts, cauldrons
helped facilitate these activities and that is where much of
(20:47):
their significance and value derives. So Joy is arguing that
feasting was this incredibly important tradition in the cultures of
Iron Age Europe, and it had this complex suite of
social utilities. And the paper invokes the work of a
different scholar named Michael Dietler, who has created three different
categories of sort of the social roles of feasting, which
(21:11):
are empowering, the patron role, and the diacritical. So empowering
feasts quote allow people or groups to acquire prestige without
necessarily requiring the existence of fixed social hierarchies. By hosting
a feast, debts or obligations are passed on to guests,
(21:32):
thus making feasts arenas for negotiations of social influence. But
empowering feasts can also be viewed as celebrations of community identity.
So there's a lot that's going on here in this
first category. Like you you could host a feast and
serve people out of a cauldron, and this is this
is a powerful community activity. In one sense, it maybe
(21:53):
makes everybody who's at the feast feel more united. It's,
you know, um, it cements this idea of community identity,
but it also sort of puts guests in your debt.
It is, you know, empowering to the host in terms
of enhancing their perceived social prestige, maybe even making them
feel temporarily like some kind of king or something. And
(22:14):
then there are a couple of other types of feasts.
One of the patron role feasts where they're um is
sort of an it's sort of like without the strings attached.
It's an expectation that the social elite must host, but
not necessarily the the obligation for reciprocation by the guests.
And then finally there's what is called a diacritical feast,
(22:36):
and this is where subgroups of a culture consume different
types of food or drink to emphasize their difference from
other people. Interesting, I mean, I don't know if this
is a useful exercise. But I can't help but try
and take these categories and apply them to modern communal
feasting situations, like I do feel like the patron role
(22:57):
feast does sound a lot like the office Christmas party
you know, where uh, you know, it's kind of expected
that the that the boss powers will provide you with
some sort of a food or you know, some sort
of wine from plastic cups at least, but there's no
it doesn't mean that we need to host the next
feast for our processes. It doesn't put you any more
(23:20):
in the boss's debt or service than you were already. Right,
But then if they don't know the first category, the
empowering feast, if your CEO was too suddenly out of
the blue say hey, why don't you and your family
come over over to my house for a little get
together We're going to have. Yeah, you wonder what they're
gonna hit you up for? Yeah, yeah, that might be
some sort of situation where their strings attached. I'm not
(23:40):
sure exactly how best to apply the diacritical one because
I don't know exactly like to what extent that would
apply to religious rituals, like say, like Christian communion or
things like that. Um, I mean that's where my brain went.
But maybe that doesn't really apply. I'm not sure. It
doesn't make me wonder, like I don't know, you know,
you know, they're like egg no people and and non
(24:01):
eggnog people, and I wonder if that's going nowhere. Yeah,
the only thing that comes to mind is pot luck
for some reason, like I'm imagining different people bringing their
different dishes and uh yeah, maybe missing the mark on this.
I don't know if that really serves to emphasize difference.
This may just be a sort of a category that
(24:21):
doesn't really show up in American culture today. Maybe it will.
Maybe it's the food court at the mall, celebration of differences.
Everybody can get what they want. You don't have to
like the other person's food. It's just about whatever you eat.
Maybe not. Maybe does that emphasize your difference? I don't know. Well,
is there anything more divisive than the mall food court?
I don't know. I have vivid memories of of walking
(24:44):
through my mall food court when I was a kid,
because there was a there was a Japanese place where
they would have somebody out with a tray handing out
little bites of chicken teriaki, and it was so delicious
they would oh man, sometimes I would walk by multiple times.
Oh but anyway, So to come back to the idea
of like the magic power infusing the cauldron as a
(25:06):
symbol being in some way related to the role of
cauldrons in feasting traditions, it strikes me that in many
ways the cauldron could be seen as a symbol kind
of like a crown with with this view, because it's
you know, it's symbolic of power, of power over the
social order, of like possessing the kind of the wealth
and abundance that you can freely give out to others
(25:28):
by hosting a feast um, but also being symbolic of
the ties that bind a community. Another thing that this
paper highlights is the way that cauldrons are often apparently
deposited intact in some deliberate, perhaps ritual manner in the
in the ground or in the water. They're sort of buried,
(25:49):
seemingly given as offerings to gods or to ancestors. This
would be though it's it's sort of confusing because there
were some people saying it's not a cauldron, but This
was the case with the Good District cauldron, right that
it was apparently deliberately deposited in the bog um. This
also appears to be something that happens with things that
(26:09):
are definitely actually cauldrons used for cooking, and Joy makes
a connection between this kind of ritual use and the
use of the cauldron in feasting, saying quote, the use
of cauldrons as receptacles for symbolic food stuffs is drawn
upon in deposition, and they are instead used as containers
for another kind of offering, this time to deities or
(26:31):
ancestors rather than attendees at feasts. So the End of
Joy summarizes and says, yeah, probably a major reason why
cauldrons are such a such a respected and fearsome magical
object in all these stories is that they are socially
powerful objects. They they represent social power, and they're used
(26:53):
in powerful social customs, mainly feasting, because feasting is something
that establishes hierarchies, that is used as as expressions of
individual power or used to strengthen the identity of a community.
And it's interesting how how this this seems to apply
rather broadly like this, this could have been a quotation
(27:15):
from any of the papers we're looking at concerning UH
cauldrons and Eastern traditions as well. Uh, the idea that,
like the cauldron is a thing that produces, can produce
a massive quantity of food. It can be made to
used to make a sacrifice. It as a symbol of
power those who possess the cauldron. Uh, it means something,
it stands for something. I mean, I'm trying to think
how this compares to uh, modern things like what's a
(27:38):
type of serving vessel or some type of food related
thing that you wouldn't really use just for you in
your own household. You only break out to certain like
when you're hosting a party. I guess maybe a punch
bowl or or maybe a fonduce set or something like that,
these other things that would serve a similar function there,
like an object that symbolizes your your power to host. Yeah,
(28:03):
I guess you could also get into the whole realm
of like the fine china, the good silverware, and so forth,
which is kind of the the cauldronization of your entire
dining room. I guess. I mean sometimes that is part
of it. It's like it's not only it's the special
dining room, not the place where we we don't normally
eat dinner, but this is a special event. So at
(28:30):
this point we're gonna finally come around to something that
a number of you may have been thinking about, and
that is the Holy Grail. So you've given all of
these associations with cauldrons and rebirth. It's notable that connections
have have certainly been made between pre Christian traditions of
sacred cauldrons and the the medieval legacy of the literary
(28:52):
concept of the Holy Grail. The Grail, after all, is
not a product of Biblical texts, but rather emerges during
the medieval period it with our earliest mention of it
coming from a work by Kretianti, a twelfth century French poet.
It's thought that the concept of the Holy Grail, the
goblet which collects the blood of Christ, is a combination
(29:13):
of pre existing cauldron traditions and the right of the Eucharist,
who I'm generally depicted as a cup something, especially in
more modern renditions. You know, this is the thing you're
going to see Indiana Jones holding this is the what
you're gonna see in the clouds in Monty Python and
the Holy Grail. Uh. Still other other times it seems
to connect with the idea. Certainly when you get into
(29:35):
the etymology of the word, it connects with this idea
of a bowl or some other kind of serving vessel
of varying materials, so it doesn't necessarily need to be
made of solid gold or whatnot. So very loosely speaking,
there seems to be a connection between Celtic legends involving
cauldron's thirteenth century romances and uh that end up involving
(29:59):
the Grail, and then centuries worth of tales to follow.
I also think it's interesting that that while the right
of immersion baptism and Christian traditions has its roots in
the use of rivers and streams, modern churches often use
artificial baptism tanks that wind up feeling more in line
with some of these ideas of immersion within a cauldron.
(30:21):
What did you think about any of that as we
were rolling through this stuff. No, I did not really
make that connection, though, yeah, obviously there it is a
broader theme, the idea of immersion and some kind of
liquid being a transformative process and the process of baptism, which,
of course baptism actually you know, predates Christianity. Even in
the Bible, John the Baptist was baptizing people in the
(30:42):
River Jordan's before before Christianity was invented. So you know,
this is an idea that goes way back and is
applied in many different contexts. Yet and so we see it, Yeah,
we see it again in the imagery on the Gun
District cauldron. There is something going on there where there's
some kind of baptism like event where a god is
like dunking uh slain warriors headfirst into a cauldron, and
(31:04):
this is somehow transforming them into some other state. Alright,
speaking of other states, it's uh, it's time to go
to Hell once more. So we you know, we mentioned
in one of the previous Cauldron's episodes that Western connections
to divine cauldrons may have prevented their use in some
depictions of Hell in later Christian traditions, and despite the
(31:28):
fact that certainly many of those myths involved people being
immersed in said cauldrons, and the fact that death by
cauldron was very much a thing in parts of Europe
as well. Um this in talking about European ideas and
medieval ideas of Hell, of course, there's there's one place
we end up having to go to, and that, of
course is Dante's Inferno in the Divine Comedy. A lot
(31:50):
of modern ideas about about the Christian Hell are from Dante. There.
You know, you can't find him anywhere in the Bible
right right, and and beyond hell, I mean you get
into the idea of purgatory, etcetera. Dante's work was incredibly influential.
And uh, if you start looking around though for examples
of death by cauldron or cauldron immersion or you know,
(32:14):
cauldron torture in in Dante's Inferno, you do find a
few interesting things. So in Canto twenty three, in which
it depicts the torment of hypocrites who wear cloaks with hoods,
bright colors and lead linings, Uh, yeah, we see a
reference to death by cauldron. Uh. This is in the
(32:34):
sixth trench of the Malibolga. I'm gonna read from a
translation here. Outside these cloaks were gilded and they dazzled,
but inside they were all of lead, so heavy that
Frederick's capes were straw compared to them, a tiring mantle
for eternity. We turned again, as always to the left
along with them, intent on their sad weeping. But with
(32:56):
their weights the wary people pay so slowly that we
found ourselves among new company each time we took a step.
And then the Dante comes back to this, and one
of them replied, the yellow cloaks are of a lead,
so thick their heaviness makes us the balances beneath them creak. Now,
the illusion here apparently is to death by cauldron um
(33:19):
and uh. I was looking into this in the notes
to the Durling and Martinez edition of Dante's Inferno that
I have. There was apparently a Guelf propaganda campaign against
the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the Second, who lived eleven
ninety four through twelve fifty, that charged him with him
having punished traitors by encasing them in lead and then
(33:41):
roasting them. At least in some tellings, this was achieved
by placing the lead cloaked individual inside of a cauldron. Now,
the Guelfs were a political faction who supported the papacy
against the Holy Roman Emperor, and they were opposed by
the Ghibillins, who basically had the opposite values. On top
of this, there are boilings in the Inferno there boilings
(34:03):
are plenty. Uh. Most notably there is the river of Flagathon,
which is literally a river of boiling blood in which
the souls of the damned drive. Here, those who perpetrated
violence against other humans are tormented. You have centaurs patrolling
the banks of the river, uh, pelting anyone with arrows
(34:23):
if they try to rise above their station in the river.
I seem to recall Virgil and Dante end up talking
to these centaurs a good bit. I I've forgotten the
conversation with the centers, but they have so many wonderful conversations. Uh.
Now elsewhere, at the mount back of the Mala Bolga,
the evil ditches of torment. The fifth Trench consists of
(34:44):
a river of burning pitch, And here the demons of
the Mala Braca use cruel skewers to make sure the
grafters punished her stay immersed and don't escape. And Durling
and Martinez translate this is fall. Part of this is
follows quote. Not otherwise do cooks have their servants push
down with hooks the meat cooking in a broth so
(35:07):
that it may float. So here, once more we have
cooking imagery, and the authors discussed this at length. They
have a little uh bit in the back where they
break this down a bit more so. Dante was essentially
building upon various well established metaphors here, especially for frauds, counterfeits,
and other false individuals who are tormented in this particular
(35:27):
portion of the Inferno. Various of the parts of the
Malabolga feature quote sharply focused parodies of cooking and digestion.
So this part of the Inferno is kind of like
they say, a great spider web, but also it is
kind of like the belly or the winding and testines
of hell. Uh, there's a lot here about the consumer
(35:48):
being consumed. Uh. Cooking metaphors were often wound up in
discussing the fraudulent, and we see that today as well.
Yeah yeah, yeah, cooking the books, um uh, they're also
the scheme is cooked up. If we're if we're tricked
into following it, you know, we're we're eating it up
or we're being fed a lie or fedicon that sort
(36:08):
of thing. Yeah. So Dante is always is painting with
a number of palets here, but but touches on various
elements that we've discussed already in this series. Cooking is digestion,
cooking as transformation, cooking as torment. There are also various
depictions of Hell outside of Dante's work of Hell as
(36:29):
a Cauldron, though, of course Dante's layout for the Inferno
is far more complex than that, you know, not geared
around a single technological metaphor, but a larger mix of
influences and illusions. You can't, you can't tie Dante down
and just ask him to compare all of Hell to
just one thing. That's that's not the game he's playing. So,
(36:50):
of course Christian Hell and and Dante's version of it
in Inferno. Uh, we have to remind ourselves this is
not a transformative realm like we see in Eastern traditions
of hell, uh, where it's about the soul being transformed
into something else. No, Uh, it doesn't even these versions
of Hell don't even accomplish transformation via annihilation. Um. Now,
(37:12):
certainly within the Divine Comedy you get into purgatory, and
that is about transformation. Uh. And certainly that concept, the
concept of purgatory that we see within the Divine Comedy
has more in common with Eastern traditions of the afterlife. Anyway,
they're still On top of this, there are certainly visual
and literary depictions of hell cauldrons in Christian and European traditions.
(37:35):
I don't imagine you could keep them out of hell
if you wanted to, even if you have you know,
say again like a Celtic tradition in the background, in
which the cauldron seems a little too holy and a
little too special to be a part of some sort
of delirious hell painting. Somebody is going to be like, oh,
but but what if you were cooked in a soup?
(37:56):
Or how about that guy that we boiled last week
for for making f valent coins? Uh? Like, the idea
is going to worm its way in there. There's no
way you're going to keep that image out of your
imagined afterlife. None of this hell imagery really seems to
have anything to do with with hosting or feasting, does it?
Uh No? But but I mean it does have a
(38:18):
lot to do with with eating and digestion. So I
mean it's it's everything seated at the same table one
way or another. Here, I'm still thinking about modern analogies
for the cauldron as a symbol of hosting power. Uh So,
I said the punch bowl earlier, maybe the Fundu said
if it was the I don't know, the seventies or
eighties whenever that was. But the one that just came
(38:39):
to me is like the really nice smoker, you know.
Oh yeah, they're the green ones and so forth. Yeah, yeah,
I'm gonna host a barbecue and look all the Look
at all the meat I can make. Oh yeah, yeah.
Big grills in general, yeah, I think totally. The really
nice charcoal grill or gas grill is very much in
keeping with the tradition of the cauldron and uh, I
(39:00):
mean the idea of a low country boil or it's variations,
uh of the low country boil, in which you know,
you're essentially essentially you have a cauldron and you're gonna
cook cook up a whole bunch of shrimp and a
few veggies and so forth. You know, that's very much
in the tradition. Spill it all out on the table
and let's all have a feast. I don't know that
(39:21):
that would really be a special pot, but I mean
just sometimes when we're talking about special, we could be
talking about uh, an ornate vessel. But sometimes it's just
the fact that it is large. I have a pot
large enough to to to create a low country boil
that that's in and of itself is impressed. You've got
family in Louisiana, right, or do you uh down in
that area? Yes, south of Mississippi? Yeah, okay, you do
(39:44):
crawfish boils? Or have you done? Oh? Yeah? Yeah? So
basically a big, big metal cauldron in the front yard,
gas flame underneath it, coming up a bunch of shump,
some older man telling like scolding you for not sucking
the heads on you. You gotta heads, that's what they say. Yeah,
with the with the crawl, dad's the mud bugs. Okay,
(40:06):
I think maybe we're done. Yeah, but I mean, obviously
we'd love to hear from everyone out there about very
certainly this question, like the special thing in your household
or a household you grew up in, or or just
a cultural tradition surrounding you, Like what is what is
your version of of the sacred cauldron, the sacred festival
for feasts? Uh? What is the or or what is
(40:28):
the dish that is central to your experiences that that
matches up with all of this? Uh, we'd love to
hear your thoughts on that, about anything that we've discussed
in these four episodes on the Cauldron, so we'll be
back next time with with with something new, something non
Cauldron related, so we hope you'll join us. Core episodes
of Stuff to Blow Your Mind air on Tuesdays and
(40:48):
Thursdays in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
On Monday's we usually do a listener mail episode. On
Wednesdays we usually do a short form artifact or monster
fact episode, and on Friday's we do Weird Cinema. That's
our time to set aside most serious concerns and just
talk about a strange film. Huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
(41:09):
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
(41:29):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart
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My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
it's Cauldron's Part four. This is really the last Cauldron's episode, right, yes,
(00:22):
for now, um, but no, no, this is the last one.
Even my son when he asked what I was doing today,
I said, we're going to record a fourth Cauldron's episode.
He's like, really, I was still you are still doing
those Cauldron episodes? Like, yeah, yeah, this is some more
exciting stuff. And you know, there's so much we're not
even gonna be able to cover in these episodes, but
this is an exciting one because we're gonna roll through
a few more myths. We have some more content about
(00:46):
just how Cauldron's factor into our our history and our beliefs.
Uh and you know we'll get into uh the Inferno
a bit as well. Rob, I am ready to be boiled.
All right, Well, let's the basically we've we've alluded to this.
We've all along we've mentioned that you have some strong
Celtic traditions that involve the Cauldron and they end up
(01:09):
having an influence over European traditions of the cauldron in general.
Uh So let's roll through just a few of these
different myths. I'm not going to go into super detail
on these, though a number of these are the subject
of of epics and longer tales and of course treatments
and retreatments over the years. So let's start with the
(01:30):
Dogda's cauldron. So Dogdo or the Dogdo was the most
powerful of all the too often to dine and you
know these are the magical folk, um, you know, the
ancestors of Ireland and so forth. Uh, Dogto was a
master of the battle club, the magic harp, and the cauldron.
(01:50):
He was sometimes called the good God because he was
simply good at everything. Today you'd call him a Mary Sue.
As Patricia Monagan explains in the Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology
and Folklore, he was kind of a god of not
only fertility, but also kind of exaggerated male desire. So
(02:11):
he's round, you know, kind of a rotund individual. His
tunic is a bit too short to cover his genitals
in some depictions. Anyway, he wields a mallet that's so
huge that he has to drag it behind him in
a cart So he's he's kind of this exaggerated cartoon
character in many respects. I like them already. He also
has a pair of self replenishing pigs that you can
(02:34):
just keep eating. Um, I'm I'm not sure how the
details of that work. I'm assuming it's like you cook
them up or you're I don't know if you're slicing
pieces off of them. I'm not sure. But anyway, I
don't know that the pigs really mind. They're magical after all,
but even more magical than the pigs. He also has
a magic cauldron that can never be emptied. It it
(02:55):
overfloweth with goodness. Uh. So he has many romantic adventure years.
He has many children. He's eventually slain in battle by
the seth Leon, wife of the Great fa Marii and
King Baler, and then he goes on to party forever
in the other world, sustained by his his bottomless cauldron
(03:15):
that he gets to bring with him into the afterlife.
Oh that's lucky. Yeah. Now. Bonnigan, who also wrote The
Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, wrote that that the Irish
cauldron is of course not only a mundane item for
cooking and stewing, but also quote a place where new
life was brewed and stewed. Uh. It was a symbol
(03:39):
of great power for the Celts. The Roman writers. Strabo
describes a great cauldron sent to Caesar by Simbri and
claims that the Celts ritually sliced open the throats of
prisoners over such a cauldron. And these traditions, to whatever
extent they are accurately reported here, may connect to the
Gunstrip cauldron that we talked about in the last episode
(04:02):
that was unearthed in Denmark but burying Celtic symbols, etcetera. Um.
Other cauldron's Monican rights have been found in bogs and
lakes and are suspected to have been offerings to the
other world. Yeah, that'll actually connect to an archaeology paper
I want to talk about in a minute. In general, though,
she she contends that the Irish cauldron means fullness and abundance,
(04:22):
and Doctor's cauldron is just a great example of this,
a never ending supply of good eats. Um. The Welsh
goddess sur Win also uses a cauldron to make a
broth that abuse one with great wisdom. Uh So it's
interesting how you know, we're getting into talking about just
sustaining the self, sustaining the body via the contents of
(04:43):
the cauldron, but then we kind of take that into
another dimension as well, sustaining the mind. Uh and uh.
This will have ramifications on on other storytelling and mythic traditions.
All right, we'll come back to some of these ideas,
but let's let's move on of the next myth here.
This is another one from Celtic traditions, but it takes
(05:04):
the idea of the cauldron as lifebringer and kind of
puts a different spin on it. This is the story
of the pair do deny the cauldron of Rebirth? Now
there there are already some some accounts that indicate that
the Dogda's cauldron, in addition to overflowing with great and
miraculously healing foods, in some cases, could also raise the
(05:24):
dead if they were lowered into the cauldron. And yeah,
that leads us into what is perhaps the most noteworthy
necromantic cauldron. Um. This is the cauldron of Rebirth from
Welsh mythology and literature. Along with the Cauldron of Dogda.
It's a key mythic cauldron. To understand the artifacts place
in European traditions. It's also the primary inspiration for the
(05:46):
black cauldron that shows up in the novels of Lloyd Alexander.
It factors into a few different tales, including um Brandwyn,
daughter of Lear, a legendary tale from medieval Welsh literature,
and the second of four branches of the mob in
Ogeon collection of Tales. So this is a this is
(06:06):
a pretty interesting one, and again I'm just giving you
the broad strokes here. Again, this one has received much
more expansive treatment and works of literature, but it concerns
the mythic conflict between the Welsh and the Irish, and
involves the exploits of Ifnissian, the half brother of Bron
the Blessed, who has been described as an easily offended
(06:28):
troublemaker or even as a psychotic anti hero. Okay, so
this is a guy who does things like mutil aid
horses inside wars, burn people alive. So he's not presented
as a good guy. He's not. It doesn't even seem
like it's one of these cases where you can say, well,
today we wouldn't like him, but we have to put him.
(06:50):
Look at him within the context of the time. Now
it seems like everyone seems to think that he's supposed
to be a crazy dangerous fellow. He's not Snake plis Skin.
He's Darth Vader. Yeah yeah, But like Darth Vader, he
has a redemption arc of sorts, ends up engaging in
a little bit of self sacrifice to bring balance to things.
(07:12):
So it comes to light that the Irish are using
the magical Cauldron of Rebirth to resurrect their dead warriors
so that they can keep on fighting. And so you
know that the Welsh forces are concerned about this. This
is an unfair advantage, right if you're bringing your own
dead back to life onto the battlefield. So what does
Ethnician do. Well, he hides himself among the enemy Irish dead,
(07:34):
and then the Irish hall all those dead bodies back.
They take them to the Cauldron of Rebirth and one
by one they throw them in the cauldron, and then
one by one each warrior emerges once more to fight.
Eventually they come to Ethnician, who again is pretending to
be a dead irishman. They throw him into the cauldron alive,
(07:55):
and this seems to sort of short circuit everything. You know,
the the cauldron is not designed or made, It does
not exist to resurrect the living. It totally just screws
up everything. And and somehow if Nisinin is then able
to destroy the cauldron from within, but in doing so,
not only does he shatter the cauldron, but he dies
(08:18):
in the process. And there's some wonderful illustrations of this.
I want more detail here. Did like, did he know
that was going to happen to him? Or what did
he expect was gonna like? Did it not? Just did
it not cross his mind that like, oh, yeah, I
can't be resurrected because I'm not dead yet. I think
he knew, I mean, otherwise it's not that I mean,
(08:38):
the self sacrifice is diminished if he doesn't know that
that this is probably going to destroy him. Uh So,
I think the general vibe is the he knows that
this will be the end, but it's the only way
to stop the cauldron of rebirth. Okay, he's not just
being like, dude, I'd love to be resurrected from the dead. No, no, no, alright,
(08:58):
I'm gonna run through a few other cauldrons. Of note,
there's the Cauldron of drin which the giant In medieval
Welsh tradition, there are thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain,
in tailing various horns and chariots, knives, rings, and more.
But there's also a cauldron owned by the giant Drin
which which can tell brave men from cowards because it
will not boil meat for a coward, but we'll quickly
(09:22):
boil meat for a brave man. Now I'm not sure
if there was a vegetarian option, but basically it's it's
said to just be massive enough to cook an entire
wedding feast within Uh. It eventually falls into the possession
of King Arthur and some tellings. But yeah, I guess
it's like if if you're not sure if somebody is
is brave or cowardly, you just have them bring forth
(09:43):
their chicken Cutlets throw them into the cauldron here and
see what happens. Here's another one where I wonder about
the mechanics of exactly what that means. So you put
the meat in. Does it mean if you're a coward
the water won't come to a boil, or does it
mean even if it boils, the meat won't get under
I don't know. I'm I'm just imagining it like, Okay,
(10:04):
you put the meat in and maybe the water looks
like it's boiling, but the meat is not cooking. You
just got some some raw chicken cutlets in there, just
bobbing around. Well, it reminds me of those stories of
um people up on mountaintops trying to cook food, like
boiling potatoes in a pot on Mount Everest, where your
potatoes don't get cooked because when you go higher and
(10:26):
higher into the into the atmosphere, the boiling point of
water goes down. So you can be there boiling a
pot on the stove and it is actually boiling, like
it's bubbling and turning into steam, but the boiling point
is so low that the water is actually not hot
enough to cook your food. So you can boil potatoes
at the top of a mountain for a long time,
take them out, and they're basically still raw. Yeah. I
(10:49):
don't have an answer for that, but it does make
me wonder to what extent like to experiences with different
altitudes and uh and and attempts to boil stuff in
the cauldron, how that might affect this because they would
clearly notice you would know that well here it seems
to take longer to to cook our food. Uh why
(11:10):
might that be? I haven't done the math. I don't
know if there are peaks in Britain high enough for
that to happen. I'm not sure. Maybe so perhaps word
of of this had traveled, who knows. Let's see, here's
another cauldron. This one comes from Norse mythology. Heimer is
a giant and the father of two ace or gods,
according to Carol Rose, who was said to live on
(11:31):
the eastern edge of the universe and had a brewing
pot or a cauldron so large that the heavens could
fit inside it. So we we mentally alluded to this
something like this earlier, and one of the other episodes
about the cauldron becomes kind of like a model, a
technological model for the cosmos itself. And here we have
a cauldron so vast that the universe itself fits inside it.
(11:53):
Whereas the cauldron while you're thinking too hard about this
myth or maybe you're not, I mean, maybe that's ultimately
kind of the goal of one of these stories is
to sort of give you a real head spinner about
about the nature of the universe. So that's the cauldron itself,
but there's there are some stories attached to it. So
at one point the gods decide they're gonna have a
great feast, but they need some sort of vessel to
(12:16):
put all the meat that they're going to drink. And
they're the gods, they can drink a lot of meat.
So they send Thor to borrow uh Heimer's brewing cauldron.
So Thor shows up and Heimer says, no, you can't
borrow this. But they start discussing and they agree, well,
well let's settle this. We'll have a fishing contest. And
(12:36):
there are apparently many different versions of what follows next um.
In one version of Heimer uses two bowls too as
bait and then catches two whales, but then Thor, not
to be outdone, catches the mid guard storm itself the
world serpent um. In some versions, the results are inconclusive
or they're disputed, so they move on to a drinking
(12:58):
contest after of the fishing contest, and in some tales,
Door wins and takes the vessel with him, or finally
just steals it, and Heimer chases after him with an
army of giants, and Thor has to smite all of
them with his hammer. Um. But at any rate, thor
it usually ends up with the cauldron. And the cauldron's
power again is that it's just super big. Thank you,
(13:26):
thank so. Maybe this is a good place in the
discussion to talk about interesting paper. I was reading an
archaeology paper. So this was published by uh the Proceedings
of the Prehistoric Society, Cambridge University Press in and it's
called fire Burn and Cauldron, Bubble, Iron Age and Early
Roman Cauldrons of Britain and Ireland by Jody Joy. The
(13:50):
author of this paper, Jodie Joy, is a senior curator
at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University
of Cambridge. And the paper begins with the quote I
really like it's as uh. It's an old Kazakh saying
that a man can live to fifty, but a cauldron
will live to a hundred. I think you compare yourself
to a cauldron now. But anyway, so Joy begins with
(14:13):
some sections examining the archaeological record of cauldrons in Britain
and Ireland from the Iron Age and the Early Roman period,
and the early parts of this paper going to a
sort of catalog of all these different cauldron artifacts and
a discussion of their manufacture and physical characteristics. One of
the main things about the section is that cauldrons of
(14:34):
the time took a lot of skill to produce. But
the part of this paper that really got my attention
was his section on the use and significance of cauldrons
from this period. Now, it's obvious from the prominent role
of cauldron's in myths and legends like the ones we've
just been talking about, uh and as magical items in
(14:55):
early medieval literature from Ireland and Wales, that these objects
were charged with mythical significance, particularly associated with resurrection and sacrifice.
But if you think about it, why would just a
big metal pot have any particular symbolic or mythic significance? Now,
(15:15):
rob we we've already talked about some ideas we've had
on that that maybe uh it has something to do
with the way that cauldron's transform foods when you cook them,
though of course that's straw of smaller pots as well.
You know, cooking transforms, and thus uh it may be
is symbolic of transformation in some way, But there are
other ways that they could acquire magical significance, as well,
(15:38):
and Joy argues that some of the significance might be
related to how these objects were actually used in their
role in the culture of iron Age Britain in Ireland.
So how were they used? Uh, This is a good
question because there are several lines of evidence pointing to
the conclusion that these huge pots were primarily used to
cook food, particular pularly soups and stews containing meat. Now
(16:02):
we we've already sort of been assuming the soup and
stew connection, but technically, you know, just a big metal
pot could have been used for all kinds of things.
So it is good to examine what the actual evidence is.
And we know of examples where large metal vessels were
used for other things that might have been just decorative,
or they might have been used to make burnt offerings
to the gods or something like that. But no. In
(16:24):
the case of these cauldrons from from iron Age and
and early Roman Britain and Ireland, first of all, it
seems they were clearly designed to hold liquid, and we
can tell because almost all of the cauldrons from this
period in this place show signs of having been through repairs,
which in itself is interesting because it indicates a long
(16:47):
social life for each individual cauldron. You know, they're being
used long enough that people have to like go in
and fix them up after they get damaged. Yeah, it
kind of takes us back to that quote. Right, you
may live to be fifty, but you're auldron will live
to be a hundred. Right. Nowadays humans may live to
be a hundred, but like these cauldrons, you'll probably have
to have some holes patched here. And that's true. Uh
(17:09):
and and so why do we think that these cauldrons
were designed to hold liquid? It's because when you look
at the repairs that were done to them, we see
that they're essentially repairs that would function to keep the
cauldron's water tight. And if these were just decorative or
if they were used for say like making a burnt
offering to the gods or something, they wouldn't need to
(17:30):
patch tiny holes and keep the vessel water tight. It's
obvious that they wanted to prevent leaks. Second line of evidence,
they were clearly designed to be suspended over fires. So uh,
this can be seen from the presence of uh, sort
of supplemental materials like chains, handles, and frames that would
(17:51):
all serve to hang or suspend the cauldron over a hearth. Uh.
And also many cauldrons have layers of soot caked onto
the outside surface, knowing that a fire was applied to
them from the outside. Third, you've got organic residues. Few
artifacts from this period, for example, a group known as
the Chiselden cauldrons have been sampled for organic residues on
(18:14):
the inner surfaces, and chemical analyses indicate the presence of
animal fats, which points to soup source stews containing meat. However,
some cauldrons from Northwest Europe also showed traces of honey,
probably indicating their use in serving honey based meads, which
would be an alcoholic beverage. Yeah, which brings us back
(18:36):
to the myth of the giants brewing cauldron. Yeah. Yeah,
So these cauldrons were almost definitely used mostly for cooking food,
usually meat based soups and stews, but sometimes alcoholic beverages
as well. But can we infer anything else about how
they were used? Well, Joy argues yes we can, and
(18:56):
points as specifically to the fact that these were big. Boy,
these cauldrons are huge. Quote. The cauldron from Hochdorff could
hold five hundred leaders. The cauldrons examined here had more
modest capacities, ranging from thirty to eighty leaders. Even taking
into account the fact that they are unlikely to have
been filled to the brim and probably only ever two
(19:19):
thirds full, even the smallest cauldrons still probably contained twenty leaders.
This is a substantial quantity of food and drink. And
I agree. I don't think I could eat twenty leaders
of soup in a single sitting, but that alone. You
can easily imagine this becoming extrapolated into myths of cauldrons
that are just so full of goodness that you cannot
(19:41):
empty it. You cannot possibly eat all of this food.
Now combine the bigness of these boys with the another factor,
which is that cauldrons are relatively scarce in the archaeological
record compared to other types of household items, even those
made of similar materials. And from these facts, Joy infers
that cauldrons were not used for everyday cooking, but instead
(20:05):
they were used for the community based practice of feasting.
And I believe the argument is that this is sort
of what gives cauldrons their special power, what makes them
uh fit for use as a recurring magical item in myths.
And legends and literature. Uh Joy rights as follows. At
(20:25):
their heart, feasts involved the creation and maintenance of social
relationships and can be used to redistribute wealth, mobilized labor,
create alliances between or exclude different groups, celebrate marriages, commemorate deaths,
and compensate for transgressions. As objects used during feasts, cauldrons
helped facilitate these activities and that is where much of
(20:47):
their significance and value derives. So Joy is arguing that
feasting was this incredibly important tradition in the cultures of
Iron Age Europe, and it had this complex suite of
social utilities. And the paper invokes the work of a
different scholar named Michael Dietler, who has created three different
categories of sort of the social roles of feasting, which
(21:11):
are empowering, the patron role, and the diacritical. So empowering
feasts quote allow people or groups to acquire prestige without
necessarily requiring the existence of fixed social hierarchies. By hosting
a feast, debts or obligations are passed on to guests,
(21:32):
thus making feasts arenas for negotiations of social influence. But
empowering feasts can also be viewed as celebrations of community identity.
So there's a lot that's going on here in this
first category. Like you you could host a feast and
serve people out of a cauldron, and this is this
is a powerful community activity. In one sense, it maybe
(21:53):
makes everybody who's at the feast feel more united. It's,
you know, um, it cements this idea of community identity,
but it also sort of puts guests in your debt.
It is, you know, empowering to the host in terms
of enhancing their perceived social prestige, maybe even making them
feel temporarily like some kind of king or something. And
(22:14):
then there are a couple of other types of feasts.
One of the patron role feasts where they're um is
sort of an it's sort of like without the strings attached.
It's an expectation that the social elite must host, but
not necessarily the the obligation for reciprocation by the guests.
And then finally there's what is called a diacritical feast,
(22:36):
and this is where subgroups of a culture consume different
types of food or drink to emphasize their difference from
other people. Interesting, I mean, I don't know if this
is a useful exercise. But I can't help but try
and take these categories and apply them to modern communal
feasting situations, like I do feel like the patron role
(22:57):
feast does sound a lot like the office Christmas party
you know, where uh, you know, it's kind of expected
that the that the boss powers will provide you with
some sort of a food or you know, some sort
of wine from plastic cups at least, but there's no
it doesn't mean that we need to host the next
feast for our processes. It doesn't put you any more
(23:20):
in the boss's debt or service than you were already. Right,
But then if they don't know the first category, the
empowering feast, if your CEO was too suddenly out of
the blue say hey, why don't you and your family
come over over to my house for a little get
together We're going to have. Yeah, you wonder what they're
gonna hit you up for? Yeah, yeah, that might be
some sort of situation where their strings attached. I'm not
(23:40):
sure exactly how best to apply the diacritical one because
I don't know exactly like to what extent that would
apply to religious rituals, like say, like Christian communion or
things like that. Um, I mean that's where my brain went.
But maybe that doesn't really apply. I'm not sure. It
doesn't make me wonder, like I don't know, you know,
you know, they're like egg no people and and non
(24:01):
eggnog people, and I wonder if that's going nowhere. Yeah,
the only thing that comes to mind is pot luck
for some reason, like I'm imagining different people bringing their
different dishes and uh yeah, maybe missing the mark on this.
I don't know if that really serves to emphasize difference.
This may just be a sort of a category that
(24:21):
doesn't really show up in American culture today. Maybe it will.
Maybe it's the food court at the mall, celebration of differences.
Everybody can get what they want. You don't have to
like the other person's food. It's just about whatever you eat.
Maybe not. Maybe does that emphasize your difference? I don't know. Well,
is there anything more divisive than the mall food court?
I don't know. I have vivid memories of of walking
(24:44):
through my mall food court when I was a kid,
because there was a there was a Japanese place where
they would have somebody out with a tray handing out
little bites of chicken teriaki, and it was so delicious
they would oh man, sometimes I would walk by multiple times.
Oh but anyway, So to come back to the idea
of like the magic power infusing the cauldron as a
(25:06):
symbol being in some way related to the role of
cauldrons in feasting traditions, it strikes me that in many
ways the cauldron could be seen as a symbol kind
of like a crown with with this view, because it's
you know, it's symbolic of power, of power over the
social order, of like possessing the kind of the wealth
and abundance that you can freely give out to others
(25:28):
by hosting a feast um, but also being symbolic of
the ties that bind a community. Another thing that this
paper highlights is the way that cauldrons are often apparently
deposited intact in some deliberate, perhaps ritual manner in the
in the ground or in the water. They're sort of buried,
(25:49):
seemingly given as offerings to gods or to ancestors. This
would be though it's it's sort of confusing because there
were some people saying it's not a cauldron, but This
was the case with the Good District cauldron, right that
it was apparently deliberately deposited in the bog um. This
also appears to be something that happens with things that
(26:09):
are definitely actually cauldrons used for cooking, and Joy makes
a connection between this kind of ritual use and the
use of the cauldron in feasting, saying quote, the use
of cauldrons as receptacles for symbolic food stuffs is drawn
upon in deposition, and they are instead used as containers
for another kind of offering, this time to deities or
(26:31):
ancestors rather than attendees at feasts. So the End of
Joy summarizes and says, yeah, probably a major reason why
cauldrons are such a such a respected and fearsome magical
object in all these stories is that they are socially
powerful objects. They they represent social power, and they're used
(26:53):
in powerful social customs, mainly feasting, because feasting is something
that establishes hierarchies, that is used as as expressions of
individual power or used to strengthen the identity of a community.
And it's interesting how how this this seems to apply
rather broadly like this, this could have been a quotation
(27:15):
from any of the papers we're looking at concerning UH
cauldrons and Eastern traditions as well. Uh, the idea that,
like the cauldron is a thing that produces, can produce
a massive quantity of food. It can be made to
used to make a sacrifice. It as a symbol of
power those who possess the cauldron. Uh, it means something,
it stands for something. I mean, I'm trying to think
how this compares to uh, modern things like what's a
(27:38):
type of serving vessel or some type of food related
thing that you wouldn't really use just for you in
your own household. You only break out to certain like
when you're hosting a party. I guess maybe a punch
bowl or or maybe a fonduce set or something like that,
these other things that would serve a similar function there,
like an object that symbolizes your your power to host. Yeah,
(28:03):
I guess you could also get into the whole realm
of like the fine china, the good silverware, and so forth,
which is kind of the the cauldronization of your entire
dining room. I guess. I mean sometimes that is part
of it. It's like it's not only it's the special
dining room, not the place where we we don't normally
eat dinner, but this is a special event. So at
(28:30):
this point we're gonna finally come around to something that
a number of you may have been thinking about, and
that is the Holy Grail. So you've given all of
these associations with cauldrons and rebirth. It's notable that connections
have have certainly been made between pre Christian traditions of
sacred cauldrons and the the medieval legacy of the literary
(28:52):
concept of the Holy Grail. The Grail, after all, is
not a product of Biblical texts, but rather emerges during
the medieval period it with our earliest mention of it
coming from a work by Kretianti, a twelfth century French poet.
It's thought that the concept of the Holy Grail, the
goblet which collects the blood of Christ, is a combination
(29:13):
of pre existing cauldron traditions and the right of the Eucharist,
who I'm generally depicted as a cup something, especially in
more modern renditions. You know, this is the thing you're
going to see Indiana Jones holding this is the what
you're gonna see in the clouds in Monty Python and
the Holy Grail. Uh. Still other other times it seems
to connect with the idea. Certainly when you get into
(29:35):
the etymology of the word, it connects with this idea
of a bowl or some other kind of serving vessel
of varying materials, so it doesn't necessarily need to be
made of solid gold or whatnot. So very loosely speaking,
there seems to be a connection between Celtic legends involving
cauldron's thirteenth century romances and uh that end up involving
(29:59):
the Grail, and then centuries worth of tales to follow.
I also think it's interesting that that while the right
of immersion baptism and Christian traditions has its roots in
the use of rivers and streams, modern churches often use
artificial baptism tanks that wind up feeling more in line
with some of these ideas of immersion within a cauldron.
(30:21):
What did you think about any of that as we
were rolling through this stuff. No, I did not really
make that connection, though, yeah, obviously there it is a
broader theme, the idea of immersion and some kind of
liquid being a transformative process and the process of baptism, which,
of course baptism actually you know, predates Christianity. Even in
the Bible, John the Baptist was baptizing people in the
(30:42):
River Jordan's before before Christianity was invented. So you know,
this is an idea that goes way back and is
applied in many different contexts. Yet and so we see it, Yeah,
we see it again in the imagery on the Gun
District cauldron. There is something going on there where there's
some kind of baptism like event where a god is
like dunking uh slain warriors headfirst into a cauldron, and
(31:04):
this is somehow transforming them into some other state. Alright,
speaking of other states, it's uh, it's time to go
to Hell once more. So we you know, we mentioned
in one of the previous Cauldron's episodes that Western connections
to divine cauldrons may have prevented their use in some
depictions of Hell in later Christian traditions, and despite the
(31:28):
fact that certainly many of those myths involved people being
immersed in said cauldrons, and the fact that death by
cauldron was very much a thing in parts of Europe
as well. Um this in talking about European ideas and
medieval ideas of Hell, of course, there's there's one place
we end up having to go to, and that, of
course is Dante's Inferno in the Divine Comedy. A lot
(31:50):
of modern ideas about about the Christian Hell are from Dante. There.
You know, you can't find him anywhere in the Bible
right right, and and beyond hell, I mean you get
into the idea of purgatory, etcetera. Dante's work was incredibly influential.
And uh, if you start looking around though for examples
of death by cauldron or cauldron immersion or you know,
(32:14):
cauldron torture in in Dante's Inferno, you do find a
few interesting things. So in Canto twenty three, in which
it depicts the torment of hypocrites who wear cloaks with hoods,
bright colors and lead linings, Uh, yeah, we see a
reference to death by cauldron. Uh. This is in the
(32:34):
sixth trench of the Malibolga. I'm gonna read from a
translation here. Outside these cloaks were gilded and they dazzled,
but inside they were all of lead, so heavy that
Frederick's capes were straw compared to them, a tiring mantle
for eternity. We turned again, as always to the left
along with them, intent on their sad weeping. But with
(32:56):
their weights the wary people pay so slowly that we
found ourselves among new company each time we took a step.
And then the Dante comes back to this, and one
of them replied, the yellow cloaks are of a lead,
so thick their heaviness makes us the balances beneath them creak. Now,
the illusion here apparently is to death by cauldron um
(33:19):
and uh. I was looking into this in the notes
to the Durling and Martinez edition of Dante's Inferno that
I have. There was apparently a Guelf propaganda campaign against
the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the Second, who lived eleven
ninety four through twelve fifty, that charged him with him
having punished traitors by encasing them in lead and then
(33:41):
roasting them. At least in some tellings, this was achieved
by placing the lead cloaked individual inside of a cauldron. Now,
the Guelfs were a political faction who supported the papacy
against the Holy Roman Emperor, and they were opposed by
the Ghibillins, who basically had the opposite values. On top
of this, there are boilings in the Inferno there boilings
(34:03):
are plenty. Uh. Most notably there is the river of Flagathon,
which is literally a river of boiling blood in which
the souls of the damned drive. Here, those who perpetrated
violence against other humans are tormented. You have centaurs patrolling
the banks of the river, uh, pelting anyone with arrows
(34:23):
if they try to rise above their station in the river.
I seem to recall Virgil and Dante end up talking
to these centaurs a good bit. I I've forgotten the
conversation with the centers, but they have so many wonderful conversations. Uh.
Now elsewhere, at the mount back of the Mala Bolga,
the evil ditches of torment. The fifth Trench consists of
(34:44):
a river of burning pitch, And here the demons of
the Mala Braca use cruel skewers to make sure the
grafters punished her stay immersed and don't escape. And Durling
and Martinez translate this is fall. Part of this is
follows quote. Not otherwise do cooks have their servants push
down with hooks the meat cooking in a broth so
(35:07):
that it may float. So here, once more we have
cooking imagery, and the authors discussed this at length. They
have a little uh bit in the back where they
break this down a bit more so. Dante was essentially
building upon various well established metaphors here, especially for frauds, counterfeits,
and other false individuals who are tormented in this particular
(35:27):
portion of the Inferno. Various of the parts of the
Malabolga feature quote sharply focused parodies of cooking and digestion.
So this part of the Inferno is kind of like
they say, a great spider web, but also it is
kind of like the belly or the winding and testines
of hell. Uh, there's a lot here about the consumer
(35:48):
being consumed. Uh. Cooking metaphors were often wound up in
discussing the fraudulent, and we see that today as well.
Yeah yeah, yeah, cooking the books, um uh, they're also
the scheme is cooked up. If we're if we're tricked
into following it, you know, we're we're eating it up
or we're being fed a lie or fedicon that sort
(36:08):
of thing. Yeah. So Dante is always is painting with
a number of palets here, but but touches on various
elements that we've discussed already in this series. Cooking is digestion,
cooking as transformation, cooking as torment. There are also various
depictions of Hell outside of Dante's work of Hell as
(36:29):
a Cauldron, though, of course Dante's layout for the Inferno
is far more complex than that, you know, not geared
around a single technological metaphor, but a larger mix of
influences and illusions. You can't, you can't tie Dante down
and just ask him to compare all of Hell to
just one thing. That's that's not the game he's playing. So,
(36:50):
of course Christian Hell and and Dante's version of it
in Inferno. Uh, we have to remind ourselves this is
not a transformative realm like we see in Eastern traditions
of hell, uh, where it's about the soul being transformed
into something else. No, Uh, it doesn't even these versions
of Hell don't even accomplish transformation via annihilation. Um. Now,
(37:12):
certainly within the Divine Comedy you get into purgatory, and
that is about transformation. Uh. And certainly that concept, the
concept of purgatory that we see within the Divine Comedy
has more in common with Eastern traditions of the afterlife. Anyway,
they're still On top of this, there are certainly visual
and literary depictions of hell cauldrons in Christian and European traditions.
(37:35):
I don't imagine you could keep them out of hell
if you wanted to, even if you have you know,
say again like a Celtic tradition in the background, in
which the cauldron seems a little too holy and a
little too special to be a part of some sort
of delirious hell painting. Somebody is going to be like, oh,
but but what if you were cooked in a soup?
(37:56):
Or how about that guy that we boiled last week
for for making f valent coins? Uh? Like, the idea
is going to worm its way in there. There's no
way you're going to keep that image out of your
imagined afterlife. None of this hell imagery really seems to
have anything to do with with hosting or feasting, does it?
Uh No? But but I mean it does have a
(38:18):
lot to do with with eating and digestion. So I
mean it's it's everything seated at the same table one
way or another. Here, I'm still thinking about modern analogies
for the cauldron as a symbol of hosting power. Uh So,
I said the punch bowl earlier, maybe the Fundu said
if it was the I don't know, the seventies or
eighties whenever that was. But the one that just came
(38:39):
to me is like the really nice smoker, you know.
Oh yeah, they're the green ones and so forth. Yeah, yeah,
I'm gonna host a barbecue and look all the Look
at all the meat I can make. Oh yeah, yeah.
Big grills in general, yeah, I think totally. The really
nice charcoal grill or gas grill is very much in
keeping with the tradition of the cauldron and uh, I
(39:00):
mean the idea of a low country boil or it's variations,
uh of the low country boil, in which you know,
you're essentially essentially you have a cauldron and you're gonna
cook cook up a whole bunch of shrimp and a
few veggies and so forth. You know, that's very much
in the tradition. Spill it all out on the table
and let's all have a feast. I don't know that
(39:21):
that would really be a special pot, but I mean
just sometimes when we're talking about special, we could be
talking about uh, an ornate vessel. But sometimes it's just
the fact that it is large. I have a pot
large enough to to to create a low country boil
that that's in and of itself is impressed. You've got
family in Louisiana, right, or do you uh down in
that area? Yes, south of Mississippi? Yeah, okay, you do
(39:44):
crawfish boils? Or have you done? Oh? Yeah? Yeah? So
basically a big, big metal cauldron in the front yard,
gas flame underneath it, coming up a bunch of shump,
some older man telling like scolding you for not sucking
the heads on you. You gotta heads, that's what they say. Yeah,
with the with the crawl, dad's the mud bugs. Okay,
(40:06):
I think maybe we're done. Yeah, but I mean, obviously
we'd love to hear from everyone out there about very
certainly this question, like the special thing in your household
or a household you grew up in, or or just
a cultural tradition surrounding you, Like what is what is
your version of of the sacred cauldron, the sacred festival
for feasts? Uh? What is the or or what is
(40:28):
the dish that is central to your experiences that that
matches up with all of this? Uh, we'd love to
hear your thoughts on that, about anything that we've discussed
in these four episodes on the Cauldron, so we'll be
back next time with with with something new, something non
Cauldron related, so we hope you'll join us. Core episodes
of Stuff to Blow Your Mind air on Tuesdays and
(40:48):
Thursdays in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
On Monday's we usually do a listener mail episode. On
Wednesdays we usually do a short form artifact or monster
fact episode, and on Friday's we do Weird Cinema. That's
our time to set aside most serious concerns and just
talk about a strange film. Huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
(41:09):
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
(41:29):
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